Stepping Out
by MrsTater
Summary: A Transfigured Hearts Outtake: In a killer pair of boots, Tonks is dressed for a special date with Remus. But when other people don't react as planned, and more of Remus is revealed to her than ever before, will the balancing act be too much for Tonks?


A Tonks' POV outtake from the _Transfigured Hearts _series, this story takes place immediately following _Adorare _in the TH timeline. While the sequels to this series, _Don't Look Back _and _Masks and Mirrors_ deviate considerably from post-_Half-Blood Prince _canon, I do want to incorporate elements from _Deathly Hallows_ into my stories where I can, so from this point on in my TH outtakes and revisions, you might be seeing more of the issues Remus talks about in the infamous Chapter Eleven.

Dedicated to **Gilpin**, who, on reading _Adorare_, wanted to know how Tonks' made out in the boots with the four-inch heels. I was going to do it for your birthday, but obviously missed that deadline, and I'm not sure if this is anything like you envisioned, but I hope you like it all the same. :) As always, a shout-out to my incomparable beta **Godricgal**.

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**Stepping Out**

Tonks had suspected when she handed over her gold to Jeannie Choo in the shoe department of Gladrags Wizardwear, London (and the thought had niggled at her again tonight when she laced them up for the first time for her date with Remus) that the knee-high cerise dragonhide boots were a fashion choice she might live to regret.

That was, if she didn't kill herself on the four-inch heels first.

Which, as she materialised like a miniature pink tornado in the fireplace, seemed an all too likely possibility. Especially since she'd already fallen over them once tonight -- though she liked to think that little mishap had less to do with the boots than with the sodding Troll-foot umbrella stand that tripped her up every damn time she stepped through the headquarters' door, regardless of the height of her heels; after all, before that, when she'd fallen on the staircase in an attempt to carry beans-on-toast up to Remus, she had on her flat, if rather clunky, Wiz Marten work shoes.

None of that changed the fact that now, whirling on her heels, her life was flashing before her very eyes. At least, the part of her life that concerned the boots -- which came to a grand total of no more than fifteen minutes against the vaster backdrop of her not-quite twenty-three years. She'd tried them on in Gladrags because she was rather moth-like when it came to all things pink and leather, but without any intention of buying because they were, well, Jeannie Choo shoes. Against the cries of her Gringott's vault and her brain trying to remind her that she was quite equilibrium-challenged, her colleague Eileen's voice talked her into buying the perfect hot date boots.

In retrospect, it had not, perhaps, been the wisest course to take fashion advice from a one-eyed witch whose idea of accessorising was a collection of eye patches that coordinated with her Auror robes.

The boots had stood in Tonks' wardrobe, collecting dust and the occasional dead vermin, ever since.

She'd expected that hot date to come her way a bit sooner than tonight, but the past two years' sighs over her single status became instantly worth the wait in the light of Remus ogling her.

Oh yes -- even to inept and insecure Tonks, _ogle_had been the only verb for what Remus' eyes had done to her in the dark and musty foyer of number twelve, Grimmauld Place. Those blue eyes had swept over her legs below the hem of her sweater dress and darkened; under the intensity of his gaze, she'd almost felt his slender fingers undoing the laces...his gentle yet confident grip pulling off the boots...the smooth slide of his warm palms up over her calves to her thighs...Maybe after dinner they would go back to her flat, and--

Her eyes, which had drifted closed in her moment of fantasy, snapped open as her twirling body abruptly came to a stand-still.

_No_, she thought, dizzily taking in Remus' slowing form beside hers in the fireplace, no, she mustn't think about that tonight. It wasn't just the magical flames of the Floo that cast a greenish hue on his face; a queasy grimace lined his features, and he looked as if he wouldn't be able to keep on his feet in the absence of centrifugal force. He was leaning, grasping at her arm for support. He was still recovering from last night's full moon. He really shouldn't have ventured out of the house at all; she should have insisted on Takeaway and a quiet night in front of the wireless, and _oh bloody hell!_ _Remus_ wasn't falling, it was _her_ tilted at a precarious angle from the upward-rushing floor, and he was trying to catch her--

Her own cry of pain filled her ears before she actually felt the slam of her knees into the brick hearth.

"Dora, I'm sorry!" said Remus, panting, but looking otherwise recovered from the rather inwardly jarring cross-country Floo travel, not at all ill as she had imagined -- at least not any moreso than before they'd left Grimmauld Place. "I tried to stop you, but you'd too much downward momentum."

He caught her hands to hoist her to her feet, but between _her_ not having fully shaken off the dizzying effects of their mode of transportation and her heels slipping into the grooves between bricks, it was a wobbly endeavour at best. Struggling for balance, Tonks kept her eyes on her feet and the floor; in their downward sweep she noticed a snag between the top of her boots and the hem of her sweater on both knees of her tights. She kicked the edge of the fireplace, scuffing one pink leather toe.

"_Bloody buggering boots!_"

The expletive rang out, and, remembering where they were -- the Three Broomsticks -- and realising that the noise level wasn't _quite_ what it ought to have been at peak time in the pub, she glanced about to see just how many people were gawping at the clumsy fool with the incredibly daft hair who'd just turned up. Luckily for her, there were only a couple of scruffy middle-aged tradeswizards at the bar, and though they'd turned half-way round on their stools at the ruckus she'd caused, they didn't seem particularly interested in the newcomers, and with shrugs or grunts of acknowledgment turned back to hunch over their tankards.

Unfortunately, the pub patrons' inattention did little to make up for the two patches of greeny-purple bruised skin glaring up at Tonks from her knees.

"You really ought to open that tailor shop," she told Remus. "Even if I were your only customer, you'd be richer than the Malfoys before the first month's end. This date started, what, ten minutes ago? And I've already ripped my tights twice."

Remus had been dusting soot off her clothes and out of her hair, but now delved into his pocket. He drew out his watch.

"Closer to fifteen minutes," he said, "since your little accident at headquarters. Or, if you prefer, a quarter of an hour. I always think that sounds like a longer amount of time."

Clapping the timepiece shut again, he smiled kindly at her and, slipping a comforting arm around her shoulder, pulled her to him and kissed her temple. His unshaven chin lightly scratched her cheek as he said, in a low, sweet tone meant only for her ears, "I don't think anything that happens in the mouldy front hall of Grimmauld Place counts as part of the date."

As if Remus had cast a spell, Tonks felt her reddened cheeks return to normal temperature -- as normal a temperature as her body was capable of whenever he was looking at her with that smile that sent her insides to jigging like Myron Wagtail at a Weird Sisters concert at the notion of Remus' liking her -- no, he _adored_her. He'd told her so tonight on the Grimmauld Place staircase, amidst the wreckage of china and beans-on-toast.

"Is that so?"

She turned fully to him, slipping her fingertips under his collar, which had become tucked into the v-neck of his grey jumper. His smile tilted, and the lopsided one he gave her as he ducked his head, strands of thick, sandy hair falling over his twinkling eyes, was so boyish that Tonks couldn't believe there was really an almost thirteen year difference in their ages. She pushed his hair back out of his face, loving the softness of it tickling the backs of her fingers.

"Absolutely," he said. "I would never take you for a date to any place with as dangerous rascals lurking about as the Troll-foot umbrella stand."

"My knight in shining armour," Tonks sighed in her best impression of a swooning damsel. "You may kiss my hand."

He did, and if ever Tonks had come close to _actually_swooning, it was at the lingering warmth of his lips on her knuckles.

"Anyway..." He drew back from her slightly and took out his wand, which he gave a precise flick to mend her tights. "...don't you think that if I were proprietor of Robes by Remus, I'd give you the girlfriend discount?"

Girlfriend. Remus John Lupin's girlfriend. _She_was Remus John Lupin's girlfriend. The girlfriend Remus John Lupin adored. _Adored_, he'd told her, even though -- no, _because_ -- she was clumsy, householdily challenged, and had a questionable sense of fashion.

It hardly seemed possible that two months could have ticked by since she'd confronted him in the back garden of Order Headquarters about the more-than-platonic feelings he seemed to have for her -- and which he seemed to be either unaware of or ignoring. And yet here she was, the sundress and sandals she'd worn for that first date in August now replaced by October's bulky jumper and boots, still going out with him.

And in love with him.

For the first time in her life, she, Nymphadora Andromeda Tonks, was in love. In love for the first time, and, she thought with a joy no Cheering Charm could ever manufacture, the _only_time.

She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck, press herself as close against him as he could, and kiss him full on the mouth, right here on the hearth in the Three Broomsticks. She restrained herself, unsure how Remus would feel about such an undeniable show of their relationship when this was the very first time he'd taken her out in the Wizarding community. Not that she could claim to understand his reticence up till this point, beyond his characteristic caution, but she respected it nonetheless, trusting him where she could not rely on herself to keep steady. She would look to him to take the lead in this relationship -- a thought that sent tingles all through her, surprising and delighting her because, as a modern career witch, she'd never considered herself to be the type to like, much less _get_, old fashioned romance.

Since, for once, she was stood at eye level to Remus, she took advantage of her height and kissed the tip of his nose.

She could've lost herself gazing into his blue eyes, so calm and quietly happy, but as a little voice spoke from the back of her mind, reminding her that the most likely thing for her to lose was her balance, she tore her gaze away and drew her wand.

"Till you become an entrepreneur," she said, aiming it at her feet, "I'll just Transfigure these ridiculous things into a sensible, Aurorly pair of Wiz--"

"Oh no you don't!"

Tonks snapped her head up as Remus turned to see Rosmerta clipping toward them, hands balled on her rounded hips, a dishtowel clutched in one fist, her prettily plump features contorted almost to haggard in an expression of such deep, personal affront that could have put a Harpy, or Molly Weasley, to shame.

"Those are that lovely pair of Jeannie Choos I wanted from Gladrags, must've been two years ago now, only they cost fifty galleons on clearance and business was so bad then with all the bloody Dementors about."

The tavern keeper's eyes were locked enviously on the boots, and Tonks regarded the lurid hue with bitterness rising in her throat. Wand still clutched between now clammy and trembling fingers, she contemplated casting a DeprimoSpell to blast a hole in the floor to fall through. Never before had she longed to fall, but plunging down, down, away from Remus' attentive eyes, would be a blessing compared to the shameful awareness she felt as she imagined him processing Rosmerta's words.

She, Nymphadora Andromeda Tonks, had blown fifty _Galleons_ on a pair of damned shoes! And Remus knew it. _Remus John Lupin_, who'd scrimped and sacrificed just to take her to dinner at the Three Broomsticks. What must he think of her? How must he feel?

She'd known these boots were a fashion choice she would live to regret.

"I'll let you have them," said Tonks to Rosmerta, avoiding Remus' eye. "The heels are a right bitch, though, so I don't recommend them for daily wear in the pub."

"Oh no." Rosmerta stepped back, and Tonks took in olive green silk pumps festooned in back with jaunty bows that accentuated her tapered ankles. "I wouldn't think of breaking up your ensemble. Those boots are perfect with your jumper..." The proprietress' bright eyes flicked upward, and her lips quirked at the corners. "...and your hair. No, they're definitely hot date shoes, don't you think--?"

It was as if someone had cast a Silencio Spell and hexed the cheer and colour from Rosmerta's face when she turned to Remus and recognised him.

"_You_."

It was all she could get out, apparently, and for a moment after her mouth hung open; Tonks could almost read the thought darting through Rosmerta's mind, reminding her to shut it.

Rosmerta swallowed, and the tip of her tongue just darted out to moisten her lips, but when she went on, her voice was no less hoarse or tremulous, her lips sickly pale against her dark plum lip liner. "You haven't been in here since..."

The words themselves were relatively harmless, the ones anyone would've said to an old acquaintance they'd not seen in some time, but Tonks didn't miss that Rosmerta wasn't looking Remus in the eye as she said it. She was wringing her dishtowel, and she'd taken another step back from them...from _him_.

Remus hadn't been in the Three Broomsticks _since he was outed as a werewolf_, Tonks' brain finished Rosmerta's dangling sentence.

She wondered how Remus was taking this reception, but she didn't look at him to gauge his expression. She _couldn't_look, and anyway, she knew what expression he would wear: that docile mask, the civil half-smile that didn't reach his eyes. Unable to look at him, she glared at her boots again, hating them, hating herself for buying them, for not being able to walk in them, for drawing attention to this man who went out of his way not to draw any to himself.

Suddenly she perfectly understood his caution, his polite, mild manners. The Wizarding community was small, and he was infamous. Blending in spared him recognition. How well she remembered his reaction to running into Madam Pomfrey at the Muggle park on their first date. He'd imagined the Healer to be shocked that Tonks would be out with him in a romantic context; and just a few minutes ago, before they'd left Grimmauld Place, he'd echoed the sentiment: _I don't think most people expect to see me with anyone. _And here he was, with a witch who was quite literally decked from head to toe in impossible-to-miss hot pink.

"Yes, I know," Remus' voice rasped into her thoughts. "I haven't been here since around the time Tonks acquired these perfect hot date shoes."

Soft but steady, Remus' voice was, shockingly, pitched with that teasing note Tonks loved so. Rosmerta laughed -- albeit barely more than a single puff of a laugh -- and Tonks, no longer able to keep her eyes off of him, saw that he was, indeed, smiling. Rather than the guarded eyes she expected, his demeanour was all grace and forgiveness, which made Tonks' heart swell with admiration for him.

But then Remus offered his hand to Rosmerta, and the blue eyes flicked down, telling quite a different story. Clearly he was unsure whether the barkeeper would shake his hand in greeting. Tonks held her breath and gritted her teeth, imagining the hexing she would give Rosmerta if she snubbed Remus in any degree. A Stinging Hex was probably a little too violent, and a Bat Bogey Hex too comical, but maybe that thing Remus had done with the chewing gum would do. There was bound to be a wad stuck under one of the tables, what with all the school kids who came here...Only they wouldn't have had a Hogsmeade weekend yet this year, would they?

Tonks happily gave up her revenge plotting when Rosmerta tucked her dishtowel into her belt, caught Remus' hand in both of hers, and shook it welcomingly. She thought she heard Remus' sigh of relief as she released her own breath.

"Hello, Rosmerta," he said. "I am afraid that since my resignation from Hogwarts, I have had no occasion to be in Hogsmeade."

"It's lovely to see you." Rosmerta let go of his hand, then whipped her towel out of her belt and swatted him with it. In a swirl of poufy yellow skirt, she flounced back to the bar, but shot a saucy glance over her shoulder. "Only I'm a little hurt my cottage pie wasn't occasion enough to bring you to Hogsmeade!"

Despite a vague feeling that she was being too harsh, Tonks inwardly raged at Rosmerta's inconsideration. Didn't she read the _Daily Bleeding Prophet_? It didn't take OWLs to realise that when a bloke got sacked from a job and then had all sorts of discriminatory laws passed that kept him from getting a new one, he couldn't afford to go out for sodding cottage pie whenever he pleased.

He ordered it now, though, and Tonks, still quite flustered, was vaguely aware of her own voice putting in a request for the same. Rosmerta asked Tonks if she wouldn't mind her cutting in on her hot boots-worthy date to watch Remus take the first bite of her cottage pie to see if he still looked like he had at age twelve when he declared it a million times better than his own mum's.

"Where would you like to sit?" Remus' breath tickled Tonks neck as he leant over her shoulder to speak lowly in her ear; through her jumper, she felt gentle fingers at the small of her back.

She hesitated as her gaze, as though Summoned, went to a table for two tucked into a cosy nook across the pub. Under normal circumstances she wouldn't have thought twice about choosing it, as it would perfectly suit a date; now she was paralyzed with consciousness of making Remus think she wanted to hide their relationship.

To her chagrin, Remus nudged her toward that very table. Presumably having followed the path of her lingering gaze?

"That looks secluded and datish," he said cheerfully, offering his arm. "Shall we?"

Before Tonks could recover with something bold about how she'd rather sit where she could show him off in case any old schoolmates or colleagues came in, he'd seated her at the out-of-the-way table and was pouring her a glass of six year-old Elf-made wine Rosmerta brought them.

Watching Rosmerta's hips swaying on her way to the bar, Tonks commented, "I didn't realise Rosmerta was that old, if she managed the pub when you were at school--"

Remus' eyebrows twitched, and Tonks chocked on her wine. _Oh. bloody. hell. _She had _not _just said...The corner of his mouth quirked upward. _Oh, bloody buggering hell_, she _had_.

"I'm not implying _you're_..." She couldn't bring herself to say _old_. She balled her hands into fists in her lap, jamming them against her thighs. "_Bollocks_."

"If only we all could age so gracefully," said Remus, and Tonks could hear the smile in his voice. "Although I suppose you've got us all trumped there. I wonder, would you..."

Tonks looked up, surprised to find Remus looking nearly as sheepish as she felt. Which seemed impossible, as he was always so poised.

"Would I what?" she asked.

He barely met her eyes through his shaggy hair as one long finger fiddled with the stem of his glass. "Morph away grey hairs and wrinkles?" The lines of his face deepened. "Erm, I hope that wasn't a taboo question?"

Tonks laughed, a deep belly laugh that carried away her embarrassment.

"Yes?" Remus asked, looking amused but sincerely befuddled. "No?"

"If you knew half of what people've said to me about the morphing thing, you wouldn't ask that."

"I would." Remus gestured vaguely toward his person. "Morph my grey away, I mean."

"I dunno..." Tonks sipped her wine. "Depends how distinguished pink hair greying at the temples makes me look. What do you think?"

She scrunched up her nose, envisioning her hair just as she'd described it, and Remus grinned.

"About as distinguished as I do," he said.

"It's settled, then," said Tonks. "I won't morph, and I'll be a distinguished grey-haired witch."

She held her breath, hoping Remus took her compliment; his grin stretched, boyishly, eyes lowered, half-shy, as he drank his wine. "I wouldn't wish distinguished on anyone younger than thirty, though. When I discovered my first grey hair around your age I recall thinking, 'Oh God, as if it isn't enough that I'm a werewolf, now I've got to be bloody prematurely grey, as well.' Although of course _you_ haven't any other flaws to worry about."

"Now there's a familiar face," said Rosmerta, sashaying to their table with two heaping plates to hand. "Turned him into a blushing schoolboy, have you, Tonks?"

When she'd gone again, satisfied that Remus liked her cottage pie as much as he ever had, Tonks having forgiven her for her initial reaction to Remus, he said, "She's not _that_ much older than me. Her parents ran the pub when I was a boy. She just worked as a barmaid and did a bit of the cooking."

"The cottage pie," said Tonks.

Remus grinned. "Yes. Not long out of Hogwarts in those days, I wouldn't imagine."

Leaning across the table, a Marauderish gleam in his eyes as they caught the flickering light of a lamp over their table, he lowered his voice conspiratorially.

"On our very first Hogsmeade weekend, Sirius developed a rather violent crush on Rosmerta and swore to sleep with her before we left school."

Tonks choked on her cottage pie as she laughed. Washing it down with a swallow of wine, she said, "I never thought about Sirius' type before, but he's exactly the sort to fancy older women."

"Indeed. He never looked at any girl at Hogwarts who wasn't at least three years ahead of us. Which limited his dating pool rather a lot once we reached our fifth year, but he as he was fixated on one buxom barmaid..."

"Did he? Ever sleep with Rosmerta, I mean."

"Despite his use of ingenious Sirius Black Original Pickup Lines appropriate -- or rather, inappropriate -- for barmaids, he never got anything more from Rosmerta than a hearty laugh."

"I see. And did you file any of these ingenious Sirius Black Original Pickup Lines away in your memory?"

"I've tried to forget."

Tonks sat forward eagerly. "Do tell!"

Remus gave her a playfully huffy look. "Don't you think I'm too much of a gentleman to repeat that sort of thing to a lady?" Under the table, he rubbed his foot against hers. "Especially a lady who had three years of Auror training and could hex me to oblivious."

"Oi, there!" cried Tonks, going for her wand. "Watch it!"

Remus raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Anyway, I haven't finished telling you about Sirius and Rosmerta."

"I thought it was unrequited?" she asked, putting her wand back.

She had to wait for Remus to finish chewing before she got an explanation.

"So did James and Peter and I -- until we popped into the pub one night after graduation, and Rosmerta told Sirius she'd had her eye on his flying motorbike and fancied him taking her for a ride. Which of course was what he'd dreamt of hearing since he bought the thing."

Glancing over her shoulder at the tavern keeper, who flirted unabashedly with her customers and who, in her clinging top with its plunging neckline, an emerald pendant nestled enticingly in her cleavage, defied anyone to describe her as middle-aged, Tonks could easily picture a man's leather motorcycle jacket draped over Rosmerta's shoulders, her skirts hiked up over her knees and flapping behind as she soared with Sirius through the summer night sky.

"Was it a one-off thing?" Tonks asked.

"They went out now and again for a couple of years. Sirius always acted like it was all about great sex with an older woman, but James and I suspected it was a great deal more than that."

Remus' eyes darkened, his gaze turning inward, distant as the lines of his face hardened, jaw tightening.

Tonks, caught up in this rare glimpse of her mother's once-favourite cousin as he had been, full of life and popular and the interest of all, had almost forgotten what had befallen him at the height of his youthful exuberance. Her heart suddenly felt a bit like a flying motorbike suddenly losing altitude.

"What happened?"

"Merton and Rose -- her parents -- were murdered."

Tonks sucked in her breath through her teeth. "Muggle-borns?"

Remus shook his head grimly. "No, they were both magical. Sirius was sure it was meant to hurt him. He broke it off with Rosmerta, to keep her safe, and swore off dating as steadfastly as he'd sworn to get her into bed."

"Merlin," whispered Tonks, hardly believing it, half-wondering if this story was a great Marauder joke she'd soon be the butt off, laughed at by Remus and then forever tormented by Sirius for her gullibility...

But Remus' eyes held only truth and deep sadness for his friend.

"How awful for them both," said Tonks.

"Yes. I think, considering that Rosmerta refused Aberforth's offer to keep an eye on the place while she hid out disguised as one of his goats, that she would not have wished for the relationship to end out of fear for her own life."

Despite the sympathy Tonks felt for Sirius' tragic past, irritation rose up against him now. "It should've been her decision, shouldn't it? I mean, it was _her_life in danger -- hers to risk for love if she wanted. Not Sirius'."

Remus' gaze drifted just over her shoulder, presumably to Rosmerta. "James said as much to him, many times. I think he even tried a few Shaking Jinxes to try and get some sense through to him. But Sirius remained an immutable noble prat." His eyes met Tonks' again, and he smiled slightly. "And he always did love his motorbike best."

Their conversation was interrupted by Rosmerta checking in to ask whether they were still enjoying their cottage pie and if she could get them anything else, like another bottle of wine, dessert, or embarrassing stories about Remus' schooldays. Tonks watched her, partly for any sign of her earlier wariness toward Remus (which was, thankfully, absent) but mainly to observe the same cheerful, warm demeanour she'd always seen in Rosmerta in light of all she now knew about her.

"I'd never have guessed," said Tonks, watching Rosmerta go again, "that she'd been through all that."

"Or that she was a good ten years older than me." Remus' smirk disappeared into his glass as he drank his wine.

"Git," said Tonks. "I didn't mean--"

"I know." Remus reached across the table and caught her hand, his fingers scuffing over her knuckles. "Forgive me for teasing you so much, but I can't seem to help myself. You're adorable, you know, when your face turns pink as your hair and you get tongue-tied. _Nymph_-adorable, even--ow!"

Tonks had moved one leg to cross it over the other, and accidentally jabbed him in the shin with her heel.

Releasing her hand and scooting back from the table to rub his shin, Remus said, his voice taught with pain, "I know you told me not to send you Valentines that say 'I Nymph-adore you', but I'd no notion you'd protest so..._violently_."

"God," Tonks whimpered into her hands. "You must wish to Merlin you'd stayed in bed tonight."

At the sound of Remus' chair legs scraping the floorboards, she spread her fingers to peep one eye through them. Remus stepped round the table and, bending so that he was stood at eye level with her, his face so close to hers that she felt his soft, warm breath, he caught her wrists and gently prised her hands from her face.

"I stayed in bed all day today. Tomorrow I'll be going away for a week or more. I shall most likely encounter Dementors along the way, and given the choice between the memory of a night alone in the mouldy bedroom of my best mate's deceased brother, or a night in a pub being kicked by the prettiest pink-haired witch in England..."

His words trailed away, and his eyes drifted from her face to settle on the room beyond her. She felt him stiffen just before his hands released hers.

"Remus, what...?"

She looked over her shoulder to see a young couple stood a few yards away, turned slightly toward the table for two nearest theirs as if they'd meant to sit there, but looking as if they'd come to an abrupt stop, staring at them.

Or rather, staring at_ Remus_, Tonks mentally corrected as the girl looked up at her companion and whispered, not very quietly, "That's that werewolf who was sacked from Hogwarts, isn't it?"

Pale, but frowning deeply and narrowing his eyes on Remus, the wizard wrapped his arm protectively around his girlfriend's shoulders and turned her away from the secluded corner.

"We'll sit over there," he told her, pointing to a table as far across the pub as you could get from Remus' and Tonks'. "Or go someplace else, if you like."

They did not leave the Three Broomsticks, and Tonks, fighting the impulse to tell them their manners would better suit the Hog's Head, couldn't stop staring at them as all the mortification and guilt she'd buried after the incident with Rosmerta cut a bitter path to the surface again.

It was slightly understandable for Rosmerta to have a moment of pause to process the notion that a person she'd seen so many times was afflicted with a curse she'd never imagined. For complete strangers to shun him was...

...also understandable, Tonks realised, the cottage pie souring suddenly in her stomach.

If it hadn't occurred the same year as Sirius' escape from Azkaban, Remus' outing and resignation likely would have been the biggest Wizarding scandal of the decade. Well Tonks recalled the fallout; for months the _Daily Prophet _letters to the editor had railed against poor prison security and the incompetence of the Auror Division to apprehend the convict, but literally overnight the concern of all in the small, close-knit Wizarding community became the Dark Creature that had been in such close contact with their sons and daughters for the past nine months. Remus' picture had emblazoned the newspaper for days. Tonks had no doubt in her mind that his image must have been burned on the memories of every citizen, so that if they encountered him, they might escape the evil curse he carried. Just as she, as a little girl, had been taught to recognise the infamous Fenrir Greyback.

How could anyone regard Remus in the same light as the very monster who had bitten him? How could anyone see _him_, with his quiet, gentle manners, and want to run? She wanted to cry at the unjustness of it.

Did this happen to him often? Was _this_ why he'd avoided taking her out in Wizarding London, lest he be mortified in front of her?

"Dora?"

She gave a little start at Remus' voice and coloured, for what had to be the millionth time that night, at having been caught so obviously thinking about what she never wanted Remus to know she was thinking about. Turning back to him, she found his face grey and his eyes clouded, still not meeting hers; but, valiantly, he wore a small smile.

"Are you sure _you_wouldn't rather be in bed?" He took out his watch. "It is a quarter to nine."

Tonks felt positively shattered after what had just happened, but there was no way in hell she was going to let the date end on that horrible note. Not when she wasn't going to see him for a week, at least, and Merlin knew what could happen in that time and what their schedules would be like. _Especially_ not when he'd risked his pride to take her out for a proper date. She wasn't ashamed of being seen with him -- quite the contrary. She sat up straighter and threw her shoulders back, defying anyone else to treat Remus as less than a wizard.

"Night's still young, then," she said. "Anyway, what's a Hogsmeade date without a trip to Honeyduke's for dessert?"

Remus' smile widened, but Tonks noted the fine lines around his mouth, the tension which marked his reticence. "Are you sure your boots are up for a stroll?"

"Long as I've got you to hang onto."

This seemed to please Remus still more, but as he helped her stand, Tonks couldn't help feeling he needed some further reassurance from her. She wished she knew what to say about the incident, but, after all the wrong things she'd said and done tonight, she hardly trusted herself not to make him feel worse. And then there was the fact that she'd as good as promised him not to harp on about the things that troubled him, which could not, at least not in the immediate future, be changed.

So she gestured to his watch as he was sliding it back into his trouser pocket. "Is that your coming of age watch?"

"Oh. Yes." Remus' slender fingers flipped it neatly open and offered it to her. "And before me, my father's, and before him, my grandfather's."

They were at the bar now, and as Remus counted out coins to pay Rosmerta for their meal, Tonks scuffed her finger over the inscription etched in the smooth gold on the inside of the case: _Romulus Griffith Lupin, a great wizard. _

"What are you grinning about?" Remus asked her, turning from Rosmerta, himself wearing a grin.

"And here I thought the Blacks had the monopoly on grand names," Tonks said.

"Dad was John Romulus. He wanted to name me for Grandpa, but Mum couldn't conceive of saddling a baby with a name like Romulus. Remus was their compromise." Eyes twinkling, he added, "Grandpa's catchphrase, I've been told, was, 'Don't call me Romulus, you sodding great prat'."

"Oh,_you're_ the sodding great prat!" Tonks punched him playfully in the arm, but her laughter died when her eye caught the couple who'd avoided them earlier. Gaze locked on them, she said, loudly, "I'm sure he wasa very great wizard, since _you're_his grandson."

Satisfied that the pair had heard (their forks paused mid-air near their mouths and their conversation died), she went on, breezily, as she stepped through the door Remus held for her, "When I turned seventeen, Mum got all weepy and said she regretted ripping off her locket and throwing it to their House-elf in a great dramatic gesture of rebellion when she eloped with Dad. And of course with my usual tact I pissed her right off when I told her I wasn't fussed not to have a Black family heirloom and thought it was bloody unfair that blokes got watches and girls got stupid lockets anyway."

Remus caught her elbow to guide her down the front steps of the pub. High Street was quiet, the shops still open but the street vendors packed up for the night; the only people out on the streets were pub-bound or headed for the houses at the outskirts of the village. Tonks hadn't realised till she felt the brisk autumn air how stifling the atmosphere of the Three Broomsticks had become. The crisp night and light conversation revived her somewhat.

"And had your parents given you the traditional locket?" Remus asked.

"Course -- and of course I never wore it as it had _Nymphadora_ engraved in it." As they rounded the corner of the building, Tonks returned Remus' watch to him. "It's beautiful. I'm sure it means a great deal to you."

"Obviously I've not been afforded the opportunity to place much store in possessions," said Remus, holding his watch reverently, his fingers almost caressing the gold, "but yes, a very great deal. It's my only physical tie to my parents. Everything else has been sold."

So much for the relief of the fresh air.

Tonks stared ashamedly down at her boots, hating that while she from time to time squandered her salary in fits of youthful extravagance, Remus had been forced to part with his parents' things because a hateful law prevented him from finding even menial work. Sure that he must be looking at her frivolously shod feet and making the same connection, she gave a little start when his warm hand closed gently around hers.

"Has Sirius ever mentioned to you that up until last June, I was in possession of a house?"

Instantly, self-recrimination gave way to a blaze of curiosity that had been building at a slow burn for months now as he revealed himself to her little by little. Lately she'd begun to feel at ease with asking all manner of question about his present; his mysterious past, however, with the exception of his Hogwarts days and work for the first Order of the Phoenix, had thus far seemed shut away behind a locked door. Tonks' heart pounded. Was he really going to emerge from hiding tonight? She hadn't realised till now that she'd been afraid the incidents at the Three Broomsticks would cause him to draw further into himself. Could they somehow have the opposite effect?

"Sirius hasn't told me anything at all about you -- except for embarrassing Hogwarts stories."

Tonks hoped Remus didn't notice as they passed under a street lamp that her cheeks had gone a little pink; once she'd worked up the courage to ask her cousin what Remus' situation had been like before Umbridge began handing down anti-werewolf legislation, and he had told her that Remus' stories were his own to tell.

"I shall have to do something about that," said Remus. "A charm would be just the thing."

"A charm?"

"To prevent him from saying anything about me but stories of my brilliance and bravery."

Tonks sniggered. "Which, in itself, would be pretty bloody brilliant. Where is...was...your house?"

"It's still a house. Just not mine. And it's in Exmoor."

"That's beautiful country," said Tonks.

"Indeed. We weren't from there originally. We moved after I was bitten, as anonymity was my only hope of being able to attend Hogwarts." He paused, but only briefly, then went on quickly as if to avoid giving any impression that he was looking for pity. "But Exmoor is really the only home I remember. Everything of Longhope -- in the Forest of Dean -- has faded. Except for that night," he added, more softly, his eyes darting sideways as he swallowed. "Unfortunately."

"How old were you?"

"When I was bitten? Seven." For a moment his lips remained parted, and he looked about to continue, but he shook his head, and instead of whatever he'd thought to add, said, "Just the age not to mind moving to a new home, as it was an ancient stone gatehouse with a tiny turret bedroom that was ideal for pretending to be Merlin."

Sad as it was to think of Remus as a small boy, afflicted with a werewolf's curse and torn from his home, she couldn't help smiling at the image of a small sandy-haired, blue-eyed boy dressed up in his dad's old dress robes and pointy hat, perhaps wearing a long white beard his mum had Conjured for him, befriending owls and squirrels in the garden and pretending to charm tea sets, enlisting a younger neighbourhood child to play the role of the boy Arthur.

"It's fitting that you became Harry Potter's teacher, then," Tonks said, "if you spent your childhood tutoring King Arthur."

Remus looked down at her with twinkling eyes. "It seems I share Merlin's taste in women, as well."

Tonks looked at him sideways. "I remind you of the Lady of the Lake?"

"It is widely believed that Nimue was a nymph, Dora."

Dropping his hand, Tonks took out her wand and slapped it against her palm in a playfully menacing gesture. "You know I never thought about trapping you in a cave before, but it is sort of appealing."

"I meant the comparison to extend only as far as that you have utterly bewitched me." Remus caught her elbow and pulled her to a stop on the pavement. "But now you mention it, being trapped in a cave _could_ be very appealing, indeed."

Turning to face him, Tonks saw Remus' eyes glimmer as he leant back against a streetlamp. He regarded her with a smile, and his voice dropped to a husky tone. "Depending, of course, on what you planned on doing with me there."

Tonks blinked. She felt distinctly off-balance, and for once tonight it had nothing to do with the four-inch heels of her knee-high boots. Had Remus meant to imply...? Was she imagining...?

Again the image flashed in her mind of Remus' blue eyes watching her intensely over the rise of her knee, his lips searing her skin as he slowly unlaced her boot and peeled the draghonhide away from her leg...

The wind picked up suddenly, rushing, with a whistle, from between two shops, alerting Tonks to the fact that it was nearly October, they were in Scotland, and she wasn't wearing a cloak or gloves. She crossed her arms over her chest and tucked her hands under her armpits; hunched against the wind, she hurried ahead as quickly as she dared in her boots, scuffing and clicking over the cobbles.

Over her shoulder, she called back to him, "I think the point was that Nimue didn't trap herself in the cave with Merlin."

Remus' longer strides, not compromised by four-inch heels, caught him up to her -- for which Tonks was supremely grateful, both for the warmth of his body beside hers and for the balance he lent her.

"I thought you weren't one to hold too tightly to tradition," he said. "Or didn't you mean that little speech about coming of age lockets?"

They walked on towards Honeydukes, keeping a slow pace despite the chill; she felt warmed from within at how open he was being with her tonight, and their conversation up to this point had given her enough confidence to return to it, and hopefully add more to her store of knowledge about him.

"I think I'd have liked growing up in your Exmoor gatehouse better than on the best-kept lawn of Sevenoaks." She held her breath, hoping that had come out all right, and that Remus wouldn't take it as implying that his childhood home was quaint, or any way inferior to hers.

Thankfully, it seemed he'd taken it as a compliment, if his sliding his arm around her shoulders and teasing her about her mum being the inspiration for her scheme to get Harry Potter's aunt and uncle out of number four, Privet Drive in August were any indication.

"I wish I could take you there," he said. "To Exmoor, I mean. Our house was rather out of repair, like the rest of the estate, but it had its charms, I think. Although I could be just a tad bit biased, because of all the happy memories I have of it."

His gentle smile faded, the lines of his face tightening; Tonks didn't think she imagined the hard blink of his eyes.

Very quietly, he said, "Of course, a great deal of that charm was my parents, not the house. It was never the same without them."

"When did they die?" she asked.

"I lost Mum six years ago in April. To cancer. Watching her decline through her illness took quite a toll on Dad's health, and he died less than a year later."

This surprised Tonks slightly; there was an air about Remus of having been alone for much longer than that. Then again, he had lost the three most important people to him next to his parents when he was very young, younger than she was now. Thank Merlin he'd had his mum and dad to turn to then.

But with his friends twelve years dead...or in prison...or hiding as a rat...who'd been there for him six years ago? Had he borne his parents' deaths alone?

"Oh, Remus, that must have been awful for you."

She half-expected him to shrug, to see his lined face set in the calmly accepting expression she'd grown so accustomed to whenever the subject of his hardships arose. Indeed, he did wear that small, sad smile, but for once it hid nothing. The pain of loss was etched plainly on his features. Was it her imagination, or were his fingers holding her shoulder a little more tightly?

"In a way it was more comforting to know Dad was with Mum again than to see him muddling along without her. He was so lost."

Remus looked up toward the sky, and when he blinked again, Tonks had no doubt that the shimmer when his eyes caught the light of another streetlamp was that of tears.

"But I was lost without them," he went on, hoarsely. "They had always been there for me, through the darkest of times. I did not realise it when I was a boy, but I was very lucky not to have been abandoned after I was bitten, to have been raised by my own loving parents who treated me like a human child and gave me the most normal life they could. Always I had a home with them, when I could not hold a job long enough to make rent on a place of my own. Yes," he said, in an almost jarring change of tone and looking sideways at her with a wry expression. "I was living with my parents far into my twenties -- yet another excuse for my virtually non-existent romantic history. Very few young ladies are impressed when a bloke takes them home to his parents' house."

"I would be," Tonks protested. "I wouldn't have cared if you lived with your parents. They sound like just the sort of boyfriend's parents I'd have loved to visit, and it wasn't as if you were just a layabout. You couldn't get work because you were discriminated against for something you couldn't help."

"In those days it wasn't discrimination."

They'd come upon a weathered wooden bench, and Remus sat down on it, folding his hands placidly in his lap as he looked up at her.

"Imagine you're a businesswitch, and you've hired a young wizard fresh out of Hogwarts. Each of the first several months of his employment, he's missed several days' work in a row, claiming an unspecified illness. There was no Wolfsbane Potion in those days, remember, and I suffered a great deal more than fatigue as the moon waxed, and from time to time required quite a bit more than one day of sleep, sometimes even a hospital stay, to recover. But of course it would never occur to you in a million years that you had a werewolf working for you, and you could only assume that your young employee was too fond of wild parties with too much drinking, and that you needed someone more mature and responsible for the job."

Tonks stared at him for a long moment, then plopped onto the bench beside him so hard that the weathered wood strips bowed under their combined weight. "No one believed you were actually ill?"

"Sometimes," said Remus with a shrug.

"And they let you go anyway?"

"They still had businesses to run, and could not afford to hire extra help to cover for me. It was not long at all before I found it impossible to obtain a favourable reference letter in regard to my attendance and punctuality. Even Dumbledore's recommendations ceased to carry much weight."

Tonks desperately wanted to argue that even if it wasn't outright bigotry against a werewolf, it was still bloody unfair, _indecent_ even, not to accommodate a sick man who, otherwise, must be an exemplary employee. But she knew that in this case, unfortunately, Remus was right to adopt a mindset of understanding those who found him unemployable. It _wasn't_ personal. Those who let him go, or who wouldn't hire him at all, had their own livings to make, their own families to provide for. Perhaps it wouldn't have hurt them very much to assist someone in need, but the fact was that every day people all over the Wizarding world who weren't werewolves got turned down for jobs, because, at the end of the day, it all came down to money.

The hell of it was, even if people like Umbridge, who promoted anti-werewolf sentiment, were purged from the government, Remus would still be a sick man. Without Wolfsbane Potion, there was every chance he might not work again.

"But now there _is_Wolfsbane Potion," said Tonks, almost as much in argument against her treacherous brain as against Remus, flinging back her shoulders as if to physically cast off the mantle of sadness his words had shrouded her with. "When the Order have done our work, you'll be getting rave references and Umbridge will be the one no self-respecting businesswitch or wizard will hire. And don't patronise me!" she blurted, hopping to her feet again.

He gawped up at her. "I beg your pardon?"

"I know that little smile, Remus Lupin, and I know it means you think I've got stars in my eyes. But I haven't, and if we don't imagine a future with a pinch of idealism, then what the bloody hell are we fighting for?"

He looked at her for a long moment with a mild expression that did nothing to dissuade Tonks of the impression that he was being a bit of a condescending prat, then, getting up from the bench and linking his fingers behind him to stretch his arms, said, "Your Legilimency needs a little work, Nymphadora."

"Don't call me Nymph--"

His hands were suddenly cupping her face and his lips pressed to hers, effectively silencing her with a kiss. When he drew back, her mouth hung open.

"Didn't it occur to you I might simply be smiling because I like having a pink-haired champion?"

Tonks sputtered. She ought to be furious with him for avoiding the issue with a kiss, but she found she _couldn't_ be furious with him because he'd kissed her. Kissed her, and called her his champion. Of course he wasn't patronising her, and even if he was a bit negative tonight, it was only because he'd had lycanthropy thrown in his face. She'd been totally out of line to jump down his throat.

With a sigh that made a little cloud in the air, Remus looked upward. "It's not that I'm pessimistic. It's just that over the years I've learnt to accept how things are and are likely to be for me, and where I can, to find good in them. Believe it or not, unemployment proved to be a blessing when my mother was ill, for I was able to be with her almost continually until the end -- and with Dad, as well. I am very grateful to have been free to do for them as they always did for me, and most of all, to have nothing disrupt the time that remained to us. And," he added, "I need not say how glad I am to be at Dumbledore's disposal. I am the only one of the Order at liberty to go on these travelling assignments our work requires."

Unable to argue with any of that, and yet, troublingly, not really agreeing with any of it, either, Tonks touched Remus' arm. "We all appreciate what you do for the Order, too. Just..." She slid her hand up his sleeve to push a stray lock of silvery hair off of his forehead, and traced one of the furrows from his brow down to his cheek with her fingertip. "Don't forget to do for yourself."

"Don't worry," said Remus, gesturing to the shop behind them. "Honeydukes is one place where I am helpless to do for anyone but myself."

The mood lightened, as if the magical properties of the chocolate permeated the very air of the shop they breathed as they browsed the shelves of sweets. However, watching Remus replenish his chocolate stash, Tonks couldn't help but wonder whether his craving was a lingering result of last night's full moon; and, if he'd been out of work before and after the Hogwarts job, just how in Merlin's name was he paying for it? Even if he'd squirreled away the whole of his teaching salary and lived frugally, it seemed impossible it should have stretched this far, nearly a year and a half since he'd been paid.

Then she remembered this entire conversation had started with Remus asking whether she knew anything about his house.

To compensate for all the sugar they would soon be consuming thanks to their Honeyduke's purchases (Remus had already opened a Chocolate Frog and paused on the front step of the sweet shop to let it hop up the length of his arm and into his mouth), they agreed to keep walking a bit. As they continued up High Street, Tonks picked up their earlier conversation.

"You stayed in Exmoor after your dad died?"

"The house was willed to me, yes. Mortgaged to the rafters to pay for lycanthropy research and cures," he added, tugging at his hair in back where it spilled over his collar, "but as they had owned the house outright, there was enough for me to keep up with repayments and live on, despite my own spotty employment."

"It must have been a comfort to have a familiar place full of memories of your mum and dad."

"It was."

"But...you sold it."

"Dumbledore heard whisperings of a new article Umbridge was trying to pass prohibiting werewolves from borrowing against property, and that any such mortgaged property would be seized by the Ministry of Magic."

"Greedy bitch!" cried Tonks. She had, of course, read about this legislation in the _Daily Prophet _after it had been passed, but hadn't absorbed it into her memory, not having known Remus at the time to associate it with any particular werewolf. Now she felt as if she were learning of the act for the first time.

"To my knowledge the legislation did not serve to fill Umbridge's personal Gringott's vault," said Remus, "but I share your sentiment nonetheless. Rather than see my parents' hard-earned home fall to the government, I sold quickly to a friend of Dumbledore's. Luckily for me the value had increased, thanks to the repairs I was able to put into it with my Hogwarts salary, so after all the back-payments were made, there was still a little left for me."

The last thing Tonks felt like doing now was putting a positive spin on Remus losing his home, but in light of what he'd said earlier about seeing what good he could from his misfortune, she did just that.

"Don't forget it also gave you a chance to stick two fingers up in the air at Umbridge."

"Yes, it certainly did that," said Remus, with a tight smile. "And no opportunity to send that particular message to Umbridge ought ever to be passed up." He licked a bit of chocolate off his thumb. "Talking of tormenting our enemies, Sirius asked me to pop into Zonko's to get him something that might annoy Severus at our next meeting. Do you mind?"

It was unfortunate, Tonks thought, that Rosmerta wasn't the sort of witch the Order looked to recruit, as rekindling his old romance might have been a far pleasanter distraction for Sirius, with longer lasting results, than brooding in Grimmauld Place about how he might provoke Snape. Definitely more along the lines of fostering closeness and trust among Order members, as Dumbledore was always talking about.

"Couldn't you just do _Wadiwassi_on him again?" she asked, referring to the meeting last month at which Remus had defended her honour with his specialty hex. She didn't think she was imagining that saw Remus' chest swell slightly at the memory of that meeting the Order would never forget; there was no mistaking his smirk. "I've never seen anything more gratifying than Snape huffing and puffing and blowing great blue bubbles with that beak he calls a nose."

But of course she never minded a trip to Zonko's, having her own list of people to annoy at every turn: Dawlish, Dawlish, and Dawlish.

As they mounted the front steps to Zonko's, Remus noticed, when his shoelace caught on a splinter, that his shoe had come untied. He gallantly told Tonks to go in from the cold, and, shivering, she didn't think twice about going in ahead of him. She'd barely tripped over the threshold, accompanied by the tinkling bell above the door, when the rosy-cheeked proprietor with hair that stuck out like candy floss from either side of his shiny bald scalp, dressed in ballooning polka-dot robes with a ruff at the neck that made him look like a clown several centuries out of his time, popped out, Jack-in-a-box style, from behind a display of Whizzing Worms.

"Nymphadora Tonks!" Yorick Zonko greeted her, extending a hand which Tonks inspected warily before shaking it, to his great amusement. "Am I to expect a Howler from Rufus Scrimgeour tomorrow, forbidding me to sell you any of my products ever again?"

Grinning, Tonks glanced over her shoulder at Remus, who'd just come in. "I don't think I ever told you Professor Sprout banned me from coming here on Hogsmeade week--"

She stopped short, noticing that Remus wasn't smiling, and in fact hadn't appeared even to have heard her.

"I'm sorry," said Zonko flatly, as Tonks had never heard the animated man speak before. "I was just closing up shop."

Tonks felt his hand come to rest on her shoulder, and the tuft of hair above his ear tickled her face as he leant in to whisper, "Not for you, my dear. Just want to get rid of that werewolf!"

In her mind, Tonks saw herself knocking Zonko's hand from her shoulder and morphing a good foot taller for intimidation factor as she backed him into a table piled high with Screaming Yo-Yos, toppling the merchandise as she told him that _that werewolf _happened to be the man she loved, and if Zonko wanted to get rid of him, he'd have to get rid of her, as well, or he could behave like a decent human being toward a wizard who'd probably been one of his best customers when he was a schoolboy, but make no mistake, Zonko's Joke Shop would never see so much as a Knut from her, or from her children, or from her children's children.

In actuality, Tonks couldn't have been more silent, or stood more still, or felt smaller if Zonko had hit her with a Silencing Spell, a Petrifying Spell, and a Shrinking Spell all at once; though obviously he had not done, as the next thing she knew she was stood on the stoop and she must have moved her feet and walked to get there. She had no idea of how long she stood in the shop in stunned disbelief that a wizard who had, until that point, been one of her favourite people; it felt like hours...days...years...later when she was jolted back to awareness by the mocking peal of the bell, with no recollection of stumbling through the shop and out the door. Had she said anything at all to Zonko?

"Time to be getting back to London, do you think?" Remus asked behind her.

"I've had about as much as I can stand of Hogsmeade for a whi-_Oh bloody hell!_"

She'd not planted her foot fully on the next-to-last step, and the precarious footing combined with a four-inch heel had proved to be, quite literally, her downfall.

"Shit!" she hissed as her palms and knees scraped the pavement; but that pain was soon forgotten thanks to a shockwave shooting up from her right ankle, which had bent at an angle ankles weren't meant to bend. The pain was almost a blessing, distracting her from what had happened in Zonko's Joke Shop to bring about her tumble in the first place -- probably not what Remus meant when he said about looking for the good in a situation.

"Are you all right, Dora?"

He caught her under her round her waist to pull her up, but the movement of her ankle ignited another burst of pain.

"No," she said through teeth gritted to force a cry into submission, "I'm not bloody all right. I've sprained my ankle."

Remus apologised as he eased her up off the ground and onto the step, and Tonks told him that it jolly well wasn't his fault, unless he wanted to take responsibility for not being there to stop her buying the sodding boots two years ago. She meant it to be funny, but apparently her sense of humour had been damaged in her fall, because Remus didn't even attempt his usual imitation of a smile. His pale face was etched with misery and confusion. Tonks muttered another curse, aimed at herself for not keeping control of herself in consideration of his no doubt raw feelings -- which of course, as he wasn't reading her mind, made him look even more miserable and confused. He must be absolutely shattered. It was long past time to be home, and in bed.

She looked across and down the street toward the Three Broomsticks; from her perspective of being sat on the front step of a shop with a throbbing ankle, the lit windows appeared miles away. She wasn't up to hobbling all that way, hanging on to Remus, and Remus didn't look like he was up to being held on to by a hobbling girl. It was cold, too, she thought, crossing her arms and hunching against a gust of wind. Bloody freezing, in fact. What they hell had she been thinking, going for a night-time stroll in Scotland in late September? If only she'd had a little more sense, none of this would have happened.

Apparition was the only thing for it -- only it occurred to her their date had begun with her falling to her knees because Remus hadn't been up to Apparating all the way to Hogsmeade.

"I'll Apparate back to mine," she told him, "don't worry about me. You can go back to the pub and Floo to Grim--"

Before she could finish the sentence, High Street and the shops vanished, and she felt her body pressed and squashed for not even half a second (thank Merlin, because, to her ankle, it had been less than a half a second of pure torture) until the bright interior of the Three Broomsticks appeared around her.

As were Remus' arms. How had she missed him lifting her? Under other circumstances, she would have revelled in this, but as the situation was, it only made her feel rather more stupid and concerned at his energy reserves being spent. He was huffing a bit as he carried her across the pub toward the fireplace.

"What in Merlin's pants happened to her?" Rosmerta was filling a beer mug, but pulled it from under the tap, dousing her feet as she turned to see who'd just broken the strict Apparition taboo by popping into her establishment.

Tonks looked back over Remus' shoulder and called, "Merlin's boots, rather. I'll send my owl to you with these bloody buggering things later. _Remus!_" She clung to his neck as he let go of her with one arm to grab a handful of Floo Powder from the box on the mantel. "Put me down, I can limp into the bloody Floo--"

"One Hundred and Fifteen Westbourne Park Terrace, Flat Ten!" said Remus over her.

And then she was hanging on to him as they spun, the green-tinged Three Broomsticks flying away into the distance as if it had been flung off on out of control carousel, only to be replaced by the approaching image of a rather lumpy red sofa flanked by two bead-trimmed lamps stood on mismatched side tables. Her head was still spinning from the suddenness of their departure from Hogsmeade -- not to mention the means of it -- when Remus carried her across the flat and sat her down on her own squashy second-hand sofa.

Or maybe it wasn't the after-effects of Floo travel that dizzied her.

More likely it was Remus, bent over her, his long white fingers deftly unlacing her boot. He worked so carefully to remove it, as if he were undressing a china doll, eyes boring into her ankle, intent on performing this necessary task without causing her any unnecessary pain.

Tonks chuckled.

Remus' hands paused, and except for his eyes flicking up to her, didn't move another muscle of his body, not even to breathe. Even though he didn't utter a syllable, his gaze plainly asked, "What's funny?"

Nothing was _funny_, exactly. Tonks certainly couldn't tell him that she'd fantasised about him doing this -- albeit under much more romantic circumstances. Not that it wasn't rather romantic about him scooping her up into his arms and Apparating her to a Floo connection. Rather like those Regency novels.

Only those novels always made out the damsel's pain was overwhelmed by the sensation of her hero's strong arms around her, while Tonks, on the other hand, could think only that her ankle hurt like hell.

"Nothing," she told him. "Only if I'd realised I'd end our date the same way I started it on, I might have re-thought things."

"I thought we'd established that the date hadn't officially started by that point."

The lines at the corners of Remus' mouth and eyes deepened as though he meant to smile, but somehow he didn't quite manage it. He plucked a throw pillow from the end of the sofa and slipped it under Tonks' bare foot, then Conjured a long, pink bandage, which he silently wound around her ankle.

"True," Tonks acquiesced. "And you didn't take me anywhere near those treacherous Troll-foot umbrella stands. Maybe next time somewhere without any steps?"

Remus_hmmed_ and secured the bandage with a smiley face pin. Spreading his fingers to span the width of the ankle wrap, he murmured a spell which immediately set Tonks to shivering.

"Sorry about the cold," he said, grabbing a Holyhead Harpies throw, which over the years had come to more closely resemble a Swiss cheese than a blanket, and draping it over Tonks' shoulders. "It'll reduce the swelling and have you back on your feet all the sooner."

Earlier in the night, Tonks would have feared that Remus' sense of humour had been crippled by her unceasing clumsiness, but she knew it had been a slow leak, as from a balloon, since Rosmerta registered shock at having a werewolf in her pub, ironically finished off at Zonko's Joke Shop.

It was not an alteration of her self-perception that she relished as a victory.

Anxious to dissolve this tension that had arisen between them, which hearkened back to the agonising days of last summer, before their feelings had been acknowledged, and to restore the balance they'd so recently achieved, Remus having let go of so much of his reticence and restraint, Tonks once more attempted to coax at least a chuckle from him.

"Your shop should have two services: Robes and Remedies By Remus."

"Only the remedies couldn't be potions, as I'm rubbish in Potions."

Irritation swelled up that he wasn't even _trying_ to cheer up, but Tonks bit back the sharp response that leapt to her tongue. "Ace at Sewing Spells, though. Speaking of which, would you mind fixing my tights again, poor things?"

Remus obliged; the holes in the knees of her tights closed up, but this time were noticeably darned -- and Remus noticed.

"Forgive me. I've never yet mastered the art of making things look good as new after the first couple tries." He bent his arm to indicate his heavily darned elbow. "As my jumper will testify."

Tough Tonks silently cursed herself for bringing up sewing so many times tonight -- it was a skill he'd learnt out of necessity after all, not because he needed a hobby -- her temper flared. "Now don't go getting down on yourself for the limitations of _magic_. That's bloody ridiculous!"

Remus regarded her tolerantly for a moment, then looked away. "You're right of course. I ought to take my irrationality as a cue to get back to Grimmauld Place. I've got to pack for my journey. Is there...anything else I can do for you? Tea?"

_His journey_. She'd all but forgotten that Dumbledore was sending him away tomorrow, on some secret mission no one in the Order was privy to. She couldn't say goodbye to him for a week -- at least -- when things were not quite right between them, when she wasn't sure if he was okay about tonight. She ought to say something, tell him she didn't care about what those people said...Except that would be coming dangerously close on dwelling on those things he didn't like to.

She ought to _show_him, then, that she didn't care, invite him to stay and eat more of their chocolate and listen to _Later, With Kirley McCormack Duke_ on the WWN. Only Remus wasn't the hugest Weird Sisters fan, and Tonks heard herself saying, through a yawn, "Ta, but I think I'll just Summon my PJs and crash right here."

"Good. I'll say goodnight, then. And...goodbye, as well, I suppose. Have a good week."

His expression softened, becoming almost wistful, which struck Tonks as a little odd, but she shrugged it off. He adored her, after all; of course he didn't _want_ to be parted from her for a week any more than she wished to be separated from him. And no doubt he, to an even greater degree than she, was disappointed and wounded by a few turns their first public date had taken. She really ought to say something.

She managed to croak out his name, but then her breath was stolen as he brushed her cheek, so tenderly, with the backs of his fingers. She watched the roll of his Adam's apple down his slender white throat, disappearing into his collar, as he swallowed hard.

"Dora."

She covered his hand with hers, pressing his palm to her cheek, his fingers uncurling when she turned her head just slightly to kiss the heel of his hand.

"Stay safe, Remus. Owl when you can, so I'll know you're okay. Or Patronus -- I wouldn't mind hearing your voice sometimes, you know."

Remus nodded, and Tonks couldn't tell whether he was telling her he would, or if he was being noncommittal, or if he was surprised or pleased with her request. But then he was holding her chin and tilting her face up to his for a kiss that made her heart shudder with a sense of his desire and need for her -- not in a physical sense, for he was stood by the sofa, leaning over her, and their bodies weren't even close to touching -- but his fingertips on her face, threading into her hair, his tongue finding the little hollows of her mouth, even his stubble scratching against her skin, spoke of a longing to be a part of her. Or she might have been projecting her own feelings onto him, which included a strong physical desire. She very much wished, she realised, for this goodbye to be more than a kiss, more even than the tentative grazing of his fingers over her breasts through her clothes as he'd begun to do lately in affectionate moments.

This moment did not, however, go even as far as those innocent caresses. Yet when they parted her breath was nonetheless ragged with longing, and her heart pounded, demanding fulfilment on another level, if not the physical one.

There was something she had to know.

"Remus," she called when his hand was buried in her box of Floo Powder.

He turned to her.

"Why'd you tell me all that stuff tonight?" Realising how that sounded, the very opposite of how she felt, she fumbled to clarify, "I mean, not that I don't want to know. Just...You hardly ever talk about yourself."

Remus was looking so steadily at her that she feared he wouldn't answer, that he'd said as much as he could tonight, too much even, and could say no more. But he put the Floo Powder back, and stepped toward her.

"Because you should know."

Another step.

"Because I wanted you to know."

One more brought him to the edge of the sofa, and he sat at the very edge, and took her hands. "Because you may be equilibrium-challenged, Dora Tonks, but you give me balance." He leaned into her, his lips touching hers, not kissing her again, but simply murmuring, "Thank you."

And then, in a swirl of green flame, he disappeared into her fireplace.

Tonks lay on her sofa, puzzled by the thank you, but deeply touched by his words nonetheless. That she could give a person balance was the best compliment she'd ever been paid, by the best person she'd ever known, after she'd spent the better part of their date fretting about whether she'd tipped the scales in their delicate relationship. All night she'd felt as if she were walking a tightrope in her high heels, on one side of which was interest in Remus' past and present as a werewolf, and on the other, wounding his pride or making him feel pitied or simply dwelling too much on something he'd rather not think about at all. She'd been so sure she'd fallen on the wrong side, imagining her ineptitude put a barrier between her, when she'd never fallen at all, and indeed, had been sturdy enough for Remus to lean on.

He trusted her. She could stop worrying and trust herself.

Unlacing her other cerise dragonhide boot, which she would not be owling to Madam Rosmerta as she'd decided that they weren't such a regrettable fashion choice, after all.

Or they wouldn't be -- once she'd filed them down to a much more manageable half-inch heel.

_The End _

* * *

_ **A/N: Reviewers get a date with the Remus of your choice: considerate Remus, who suggests you wear trainers for the sake of comfort during your walk through Hogsmeade -- because of course he wants to have a nice long date with you; flirty Remus, who prefers flip-flops to show off your painted toenails and toe ring; or sexy Remus, who can't resist a pair of knee-high boots with four-inch heels, mostly for the fun of helping you take them off later... **_


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